True Love
Farley Granger & Cathy O’Donnell
Mulholland Drive - David Lynch, 2001.
Best movie/hottest babes of the 2000’s.
The Abortion
from The Stuff I Saw
I wasn’t surprised when she told me she was pregnant. I wasn’t nervous either. By that point even our own friends were struggling to keep up with us. She preferred the do-it-yourself method of drinking, speeding, and smoking that thing to death until, when she did give birth to it, it slid out into the toilet in a string of black blood. We named it Marty, and I was delighted it looked less like me than her.
I’m not sure if it’s technically fair to call the solos in “Blue Sky” a bridge, but I don’t fucking care. I think this song contains the best solo Duane Allman ever took on record, and my personal favorite guitar solo of all time. The transition from his solo to Dickie’s is pure Allman Brothers genius. I listen to this song when i want to fall in love with music all over again. Enjoy!
This is actually top 3 favorite love songs of all time for me, “Mayor of Simpleton” by XTC. With a relentless baseline, layered and intricate vocal arrangement, brilliant lyrics and production to match, it is maybe their best song as well (main competition being “Earn Enough For Us”). The bridge is something special too, I love the echo they put on his voice for the “can’t put on an act act act act” line. The transition back into the verse with the “and anyway” line is perfection. Pure Pop Bliss.
I think the bridge in this song, “Making Plans for Nigel”, like Britney’s “Baby One More Time” contains the best hooks of the whole song. “Nigel is happy in his world/in his world!” starting at 1:44.
What’s so crazy about XTC is that while most bands have one good guitar line to base a song around, XTC will usually have 3 or 4 great guitar riffs in a single song, like “Generals and Majors”. This is an instrumental bridge. The transition into it is epic, with a cry of “world war 3!” at 2:30. The acoustic guitar riff that the bridge is based on is beautiful, with a well placed tambourine ups the energy—the texture change in the arrangement is so unexpected and satisfying. These dudes knew what the fuck they were doing.
I have included 4 XTC songs on my top 10 favorite bridges of all time list. They are, without a doubt, my favorite bridge writers. Here’s a great one from “Senses Working Overtime.” Great baseline, lyrics, melody and call/response. These dudes liked to add tambourines to their bridges, and it is not hard to see why here. A simple addition of a tambourine can be such a game changer when it comes to the dynamics of a song and XTC knew how to exploit this shrewdly. ”And birds might fall from black skies!” The album version (can’t find on youtube) contains one extra line in the bridge than the single version: I say, keep it in!!
